Leaders of China, Taiwan meet for first time

Published 1:40 pm, Saturday, November 7, 2015

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou (left) shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping before their conference at the Shangri-la Hotel in Singapore.

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou (left) shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping before their conference at the Shangri-la Hotel in Singapore.

Photo: Roslan Rahman, AFP / Getty Images

Leaders of China, Taiwan meet for first time

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SINGAPORE — Breaking with nearly seven decades of estrangement, the presidents of mainland China and Taiwan sat down for talks Saturday — the first such encounter between leaders of the two sides since the Nationalist Party lost the Chinese civil war in 1949 and retreated to the island.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou met at the Shangri-la Hotel, shaking hands and smiling broadly. The two leaders, in a sign of the delicate protocol for the meeting, were to address each other not as “president” but as Mr. Xi and Mr. Ma.

Before meeting privately, the two men read from prepared statements, with Xi speaking for about three minutes and Ma for seven. Xi called the meeting a “historic day” and referred to Taiwan and mainland China as “brothers who are still connected by our flesh even if our bones are broken.”

Taiwan has had de facto independence for the past 66 years, and for decades the Nationalist-led government in Taipei regarded itself as the rightful leader of both Taiwan and mainland China, though in recent years it has dropped that position. These days, opinion surveys in Taiwan show that a majority of Taiwan’s 23 million people want to maintain the democratic island’s separate status from the mainland.

Communist leaders in Beijing, meanwhile, continue to regard Taiwan as a breakaway province that must eventually be reunited with the mainland. Underscoring that, Xi told Ma: “Both sides belong to one country. … That fact and legal basis has never changed and will never change.”

Ma has pushed closer relations between Taiwan and the mainland during his two terms in office.

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